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How many times have different Provinces threatened to break away from Ottowa? How many considered joining the United States to spite the central Canadian government?

Many in Quebec want to separate from Canada. There are few voices in the West calling for independence from Ottawa because the Eastern provinces have disproportionate sway in politics. But no one wants to join the US as far as I know.

Quebec is the only province with a substantial separatist movement. That's partly because its the only Francophone-majority province. The first settlers in Canada were French, then the British conquered them, so they see themselves as culturally distinct from English Canada. Given that I can't really see them joining the US, especially since their politics are pretty much social-democratic (far more than the rest of Canada).

Support for separatism in Quebec peaked around 1995, when there was a referendum and the federalists beat the sovereigntists by a margin of less than 1%. Because it was such a close call, the government then asked the Supreme Court for a ruling on whether Quebec could unilaterally separate from Canada. The Court basically told them "they cannot do it unilaterally, but if a substantial majority (ie. not 50%+1) want to, than you have to negotiate a separation with them". I tend to agree with one of my political science profs that such negotiations would end in limbo. It hasn't come up because separatism isn't that popular these days, the general consensus seems to be that federalism is okay as long as we find your policies agreeable (going to be interesting to see how this plays out with the current Conservative government since they don't share much ideology with most Quebecois and have very little support there).

One of the western provinces, Alberta, has a small separatist movement but it's politically irrelevant at the moment (especially since the Conservative government has a lot of support there). While Alberta is probably the most conservative Canadian province, the main driving force behind this movement is Alberta's huge oil reserves. They don't like having been subject to national energy policies and don't like the Canadian environmental lobby (quite a bit of Alberta's oil is in tar sands, and extracting this has a much larger environmental impact than conventional oil extraction). Their political culture is a lot more agreeable to joining the US than other provinces but I'm still not sure if they'd go for it.

There's people in my own province of British Columbia that would like to see British Columbia, Washington State and Oregon form a country independent of both the US and Canada, but it's never given rise to a political movement. Probably because there are things about it that make sense to British Columbians (many people, myself included, feel Vancouver has far closer ties with Seattle than any major Canadian city), most of us are happy enough in Canada and it would take a lot of work both to effect the separation and merge (fairly different) state institutions.

Quebec is the only province with a substantial separatist movement. That's partly because its the only Francophone-majority province. The first settlers in Canada were French, then the British conquered them, so they see themselves as culturally distinct from English Canada. Given that I can't really see them joining the US, especially since their politics are pretty much social-democratic (far more than the rest of Canada).

Support for separatism in Quebec peaked around 1995, when there was a referendum and the federalists beat the sovereigntists by a margin of less than 1%. Because it was such a close call, the government then asked the Supreme Court for a ruling on whether Quebec could unilaterally separate from Canada. The Court basically told them "they cannot do it unilaterally, but if a substantial majority (ie. not 50%+1) want to, than you have to negotiate a separation with them". I tend to agree with one of my political science profs that such negotiations would end in limbo. It hasn't come up because separatism isn't that popular these days, the general consensus seems to be that federalism is okay as long as we find your policies agreeable (going to be interesting to see how this plays out with the current Conservative government since they don't share much ideology with most Quebecois and have very little support there).

One of the western provinces, Alberta, has a small separatist movement but it's politically irrelevant at the moment (especially since the Conservative government has a lot of support there). While Alberta is probably the most conservative Canadian province, the main driving force behind this movement is Alberta's huge oil reserves. They don't like having been subject to national energy policies and don't like the Canadian environmental lobby (quite a bit of Alberta's oil is in tar sands, and extracting this has a much larger environmental impact than conventional oil extraction). Their political culture is a lot more agreeable to joining the US than other provinces but I'm still not sure if they'd go for it.

There's people in my own province of British Columbia that would like to see British Columbia, Washington State and Oregon form a country independent of both the US and Canada, but it's never given rise to a political movement. Probably because there are things about it that make sense to British Columbians (many people, myself included, feel Vancouver has far closer ties with Seattle than any major Canadian city), most of us are happy enough in Canada and it would take a lot of work both to effect the separation and merge (fairly different) state institutions.

The BC/Washington/Oregon concept is more or less designed as a Pacific Northwest union, though I think some people advocate including part of northern California (which would make things even more complex, I guess).

The Atlantic provinces tend to be small (less than 2.5 million people between), economically not very powerful, and less alienated from the federal government than the western provinces (just look at the geography) or Quebec. Newfoundland is the only one where I could see separatism having much appeal at all, and there only because of the potential for offshort oil resources.

Can Quebec make it on it's own? It seems really cool and I understand the sentiment but......meeehhhhh

Depending to what you call ''on it's own'' .
When the ''option'' still had more supporter, the independetist leaders talked about using still the Canadian dollars among other thing...
They wanted separation but wanted to keep the advantages.

When three puppygirls named after pastries are on top of each other, it is called Eclair a'la menthe et Biscotti aux fraises avec beaucoup de Ricotta sur le dessus.
Most of all, you have to be disciplined and you have to save, even if you hate our current financial system. Because if you don't save, then you're guaranteed to end up with nothing.

There isn't much bad to say about Hawaii (unless you live there...then you call it boring). California has lots of issues for people to pick out even excluding anything involving Hollywood or San Francisco.

There isn't much bad to say about Hawaii (unless you live there...then you call it boring). California has lots of issues for people to pick out even excluding anything involving Hollywood or San Francisco.

Hawaii has a high cost of living and jobs issues (even without a recession). It is simply a desirable destination fantasy. California manages to be a really interesting but challenging place to live. I wonder how many of these poll subjects have done any reading on the states much less visited or lived there.

At best, you can just call this a perception poll -- after all, you can ask me my opinion on Toronto politics but my opinions are utterly worthless being totally bereft of useful data.

When three puppygirls named after pastries are on top of each other, it is called Eclair a'la menthe et Biscotti aux fraises avec beaucoup de Ricotta sur le dessus.
Most of all, you have to be disciplined and you have to save, even if you hate our current financial system. Because if you don't save, then you're guaranteed to end up with nothing.